applied to their sale and
the inclusion of unnecessary high values was, to put it mildly, an
official _faux pas._ It has been asserted that the values from $2 to $5
inclusive were quite unnecessary as it was not possible to use either of
these denominations in prepayment of any legitimate postal charges. But
it was also pointed out that as there was no limit to the weight of a
package sent by first class mail a heavy letter could easily call for
more postage than $5. Indeed, in his article in the _Monthly Journal_,
Mr. Donald A. King stated:--

At a post office with which I am somewhat familiar the posting of
letters and parcels for the United Kingdom and other Postal Union
countries that called for postage from $1.00 upwards was, at
certain periods, a matter of daily, often hourly, occurrence, so
much so that the only comment it excited was from the clerk
cancelling, who would audibly wish that there were higher values in
the permanent issue than 50c and thus save time cancelling the
entire length of a large envelope.

Within my own experience there has been more than one case where a
letter has been mailed on which there was not space to place the
stamps; an entire sheet (100) of 15 cents stamps was pasted on,
obliterated, and then another with some odd values completed the
prepayment; and the case can be recalled of a letter on which
$40.00 postage was prepaid. While the Jubilee set was in everyday
use the sight of the higher values was quite common on any mail for
the United Kingdom and Europe, shipping and commercial houses
prepaying their mail with the "dollar" values simply as a matter of
convenience.

But though there may have been isolated instances in which high values
could be used with convenience their very limited use is obvious from
the fact that the Canadian government has always, both before and since
the emission of the Jubilee set, found a 50c value high enough for all
practical purposes. Had postal requirements called for such constant use
of high values as Mr. King's remarks lead us to infer it is hardly
likely that, when the remainders were finally withdrawn and destroyed in
1905, out of a comparatively small total issue of 25,000 of each of the
dollar stamps 94 of the $1, 66 of the $2, 1,835 of the $3, 2,013 of the
$4, and 1,240 of the $5 would be returned and destroyed.

[Illustration]

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